]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-december-2-2016/feed/0Length limit of the Run and RunOnce registry keyshttp://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/length-limit-of-the-run-and-runonce-registry-keys/
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/length-limit-of-the-run-and-runonce-registry-keys/#respondWed, 02 Nov 2016 16:00:54 +0000http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/?p=5287Microsoft has had the registry keys for Run and RunOnce in the registry since the registry was introduced in Windows 95 and Windows NT 4. But in the 20+ years that those keys have been there (and I’ve used them for a variety of things) I’ve never known that there was a limit on the...

]]>Microsoft has had the registry keys for Run and RunOnce in the registry since the registry was introduced in Windows 95 and Windows NT 4. But in the 20+ years that those keys have been there (and I’ve used them for a variety of things) I’ve never known that there was a limit on the length of the commands that you could put into those keys.

I found this while working on a client project when I needed to kick off some powershell automatically when the server restarted to get it added to the domain, as well as do a few other things. But for some reason the key just wasn’t running.

I did a LOT of digging around the Internet and I stumbled across this old Stack Overflow post (from 2012) which in the comments talks about how there’s a limit of 256 characters. I threw the command in Microsoft word and low and behold my command was 350+ characters long.

The next step was to change the PowerShell script that created the command to put it into a batch file and then setup the RunOnce key to run the batch file instead, and it worked on the next try.

So here it is documented for all the world to see, sometime in the mid 1990s, someone at Microsoft set the length of a command at 256 characters, probably to save memory and because “why would anyone need a command longer than 256 characters”. And today in 2016 it bit me.

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/length-limit-of-the-run-and-runonce-registry-keys/feed/0When does it make sense to move to the cloud?http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/when-does-it-make-sense-to-move-to-the-cloud/
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/when-does-it-make-sense-to-move-to-the-cloud/#respondWed, 26 Oct 2016 18:00:46 +0000http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/?p=5229Moving to the cloud isn’t for everyone. When the cloud providers first launched their cloud platforms their approach, and marketing message, was for the most part that everything should be running in the cloud. And they were pushing that message hard. Today however we have a much friendlier, cuddlier cloud and the cloud providers understand...

]]>Moving to the cloud isn’t for everyone. When the cloud providers first launched their cloud platforms their approach, and marketing message, was for the most part that everything should be running in the cloud. And they were pushing that message hard.

Today however we have a much friendlier, cuddlier cloud and the cloud providers understand that not everything will be running in the cloud. Hybrid configurations are not only allowed, they are encouraged (don’t get me wrong, Microsoft, Amazon, VMware, Rackspace, etc. will all be thrilled if you’ll put your entire platform in their cloud environments.

The reality is that not all workloads are a right fit for the cloud. If you are running highly sustained workloads, then the cloud probably isn’t the right solution for your environment. The systems which work best in the cloud are the ones which can be converted to use the various PaaS services not just the IaaS services. The PaaS services will usually provide a more cost effective hosting solution, especially for workloads which vary over time; for example, ramping up during the day and becoming almost idle overnight.

Even if running in a PaaS environment isn’t an option this may be cost effective for running in an IaaS environment. It all depends on how bursty the workload is that you plan on moving to the cloud.

The other metric that you need to consider before moving to the cloud, is how long is the ROI on moving to the cloud? If you just purchased new hardware for hosting your production environment in a CoLo (or your own data center) then moving to the cloud probably isn’t the best option for you, at least not right now. You need to get your monies worth from the hardware that you just invested in before you replace it with a cloud offering. If however your hardware has reached the end of its life cycle, then now is the perfect time to consider moving to the cloud, as one of the benefits of moving to the cloud is that the cloud provider takes on the hardware replacement cost every few years instead of you having to take on those costs.

When looking at cloud provider costs, remember the cloud providers are in a race to the bottom on cost. Spinning up services in the various cloud platforms is getting cheaper than ever. Especially if you can take advantage of long term contracts and pre-paid services as these can knock even more of the cost for moving to the cloud down even lower.

One big key to taking advantage of the cloud is to scale down when you don’t have a need for the load, and scale up when you do. By scaling down resources when they aren’t needed, depending on your workload you could end up running services at a lower pricepoint about 50% of the time (16 hours of peak load 5 days a week, 8 hours of low load 5 days a week, and 24 hours of low load on the weekend breaks down to 80 peak load hours and 88 low load hours) depending on your applications workload.

With these numbers in mind, suddenly moving services from on-premises to the cloud (we do recommend Microsoft Azure as we are a Gold Cloud Platform partner with Microsoft) suddenly looks a lot more attractive.

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/when-does-it-make-sense-to-move-to-the-cloud/feed/0Obscurity is not Securityhttp://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/obscurity-is-not-security/
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/obscurity-is-not-security/#respondWed, 19 Oct 2016 20:10:01 +0000http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/?p=5315We’ve all heard the argument that using a different TCP port number for SQL, other than 1433, is more secure. Here’s the truth, it isn’t. Andy said it best here in a conversation on Twitter that happened in the #sqlhelp hash tag. If you think that hiding your SQL Servers on a different TCP port...

]]>We’ve all heard the argument that using a different TCP port number for SQL, other than 1433, is more secure. Here’s the truth, it isn’t. Andy said it best here in a conversation on Twitter that happened in the #sqlhelp hash tag. If you think that hiding your SQL Servers on a different TCP port number is going to make them harder to break into you are sadly mistaken.

The two most common ways of a data breach are employees and SQL Injection. Employees already know what port the SQL Server is listening on, as they know how to connect to it already. If not, they can easily download a port scanner and scan the SQL Server for open ports. The ones that are open they’ll connect to. If it’s a decent port scanner it’ll tell them which port is SQL and what all the other open ports are so they’ll know which one to connect to. You’ve slowed the attacker down by about 5-10 seconds, maybe.

If the attacker is using SQL injection then they don’t care what port the SQL Server is running on. They are connecting to the web/app tier and just using whatever SQL Server connection information that the application has to get access to your database. By changing the TCP port number you haven’t slowed them down at all.

Proper security requires understand user/business requirements and building a solution which will meet those requirements while building proper secure protections into the system so that if something does go wrong the exposure is limited.

Pretending that hiding the servers and making them harder to find is making them more secure isn’t. Spend time doing things which will make the environment actually secure so that when the system is breached the data isn’t all lost. And if possible do this without making the environment harder to manage, which is all that you are doing by changing the TCP port numbers.

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/obscurity-is-not-security/feed/0Recommended reading from mrdenny for September 30, 2016http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-september-30-2016/
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-september-30-2016/#respondFri, 30 Sep 2016 18:08:03 +0000http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/?p=5325This week I’ve found some great things for you to read. These are a few of my favorites that I’ve found this week. SQLSweet16!, Episode 7: Install Option for Instant File Initialization SQL Server on Xeon Phi? VMware Announces Alliances and Strategies for the Internet of Things Pennsylvania Governor Launches New Open Data Program, OpenDataPA...

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-september-30-2016/feed/0Your PASS Summit Speaker Idol Judgeshttp://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/pass-summit-speaker-idol-judges/
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/pass-summit-speaker-idol-judges/#respondMon, 26 Sep 2016 17:18:51 +0000http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/?p=5320Last week I announced the PASS Summit 2016 Speaker Idol contestants. This week it’s time to announce the judges. We’ve seen most of the judges at speaker idol before, so we know how great a job they’ll do. Last year we had 5 judges each day and six at the finals and things were a little...

]]>Last week I announced the PASS Summit 2016 Speaker Idol contestants. This week it’s time to announce the judges. We’ve seen most of the judges at speaker idol before, so we know how great a job they’ll do. Last year we had 5 judges each day and six at the finals and things were a little to cramped at the judges table. So this year we’ve reduced the number of judges by one. For each of the opening rounds we’ll have four judges, then at the finals we’ll have five judges.

Now you might be noticing that there are six names when I said that there would only be 4 judges plus one for the finals. Because of how tight the schedule at the PASS Summit is we can’t have the same judges judging all the sessions, so we decided to break things up a little, which gives us a chance to work with an amazing new judge for this year, Kendra Little.

The way the judging lineup will land will as follows.

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Finals

Joey

X

X

X

X

Allan

X

X

X

Karen

X

X

X

X

Mark

X

X

X

X

Kendra

X

Andre

X

I think that we’ve got a really great lineup of judges for this years Speaker Idol. Each one of our judges is a very well known speaker and they’ll all be able to give really great feedback to our contestants.

I’d really like to thanks our judges for offering to give up some a large chunk of time at the summit to do this (there’s only so many sessions at the summit, and this is a big chunk of time).

I’m really looking forward to this years speaker idol, I know everyone is going to go great.

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/pass-summit-speaker-idol-judges/feed/0Recommended reading from mrdenny for September 23, 2016http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-september-23-2016/
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-september-23-2016/#respondFri, 23 Sep 2016 18:31:41 +0000http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/?p=5322This week I’ve found some great things for you to read. These are a few of my favorites that I’ve found this week. SQLSweet16!, Episode 7: Install Option for Instant File Initialization SQL Server on Xeon Phi? VMware Announces Alliances and Strategies for the Internet of Things Pennsylvania Governor Launches New Open Data Program, OpenDataPA...

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-september-23-2016/feed/0Recommended reading from mrdenny for September 9, 2016http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-september-9-2016/
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-september-9-2016/#respondFri, 09 Sep 2016 17:18:07 +0000http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/?p=5304This week I’ve found some great things for you to read. These are a few of my favorites that I’ve found this week. Presidential Policy Directive — United States Cyber Incident Coordination SQL Saturday Changes SQL Server MVP Deep Dives Vol. 2 The Legend of the Filtered Index AT TIME ZONE – a new favourite...

]]>http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/recommended-reading-mrdenny-september-9-2016/feed/0PASS Summit SQL Karaoke Tickets Going Fasthttp://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/pass-summit-sql-karaoke-tickets-going-fast/
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/pass-summit-sql-karaoke-tickets-going-fast/#respondWed, 07 Sep 2016 18:00:00 +0000http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/sql-server/?p=5295This year, like the past view years we’ll be kicking off the PASS Summit with a (loud) bang at Amber on 1st street in Seattle. There are still tickets available for this rocking party. This is the event to attend on Tuesday night to come out, have something to drink, sign some karaoke, watch others...

]]> This year, like the past view years we’ll be kicking off the PASS Summit with a (loud) bang at Amber on 1st street in Seattle. There are still tickets available for this rocking party. This is the event to attend on Tuesday night to come out, have something to drink, sign some karaoke, watch others sign karaoke and have a great time.

Like we’ve done in prior years we’ll have a live band performing with our singers. This event has always been a hit at the PASS Summit in years past, and it’ll be a popular event this year as well.

Get your tickets before they sell out and come down, have a blast, make some noise and enjoy the party.